Windows 7 Tips, Tricks (and the occasional Hack).

And here we are again with yet another installment in our ongoing series of Windows 7 goodness. In our past articles we touched on a couple neet tricks that you can accomplish with some simple text and a couple easy clicks here and there. All useful. Today we will continue that trend and give you some Windows 7 goodies that are easy to setup and another that will require a bit more complexity. You can consider it a more "advanced" trick, but if you follow the steps I will give you, anyone can make it work. So without any further delay, here we go.

Tip # 4: With this tip we will be entering the wonderful world of Internet Explorer. Although many people (myself included) use Firefox, Internet Explorer is still a very capable browser. And if you take advantage of some of it's more advanced settings, it can rival some of the best around. And maybe even reclaim it's spot on the "Best Internet Browser" list. Today we will discuss Internet Explorer "Add-Ons" and the features they can add to your browsing experience.

There are many different ways to utilize today's add-ons. I could literally type pages and pages of descriptions if I was to try and explain all the different add-ons. But that is not the point of this series. I am here to point out the advantages of doing this the right way. First of all adding this to your Internet Explorer is as easy as downloading anything else you would download. Today's Windows is not like the previous versions, because when you download an add-on for Explorer it will get installed automatically for you. So what you need to know how to do is manage your add-ons. And that is very simple. Just find the Tools drop down menu on the far right side of Internet Explorer and click it. In that menu you will see an option that reads: Manage Add Ons. Clicking on that will load a separate window that will show you all your add ons broken up into separate categories. From here you can Enable or Disable the add-ons and even Remove them as well. Do yourself a favor and get familiar with this menu and all its functions. Because if you do, you will be one step closer to customizing Internet Explorer to do exactly what you want and need it to do. As I mentioned a minute ago, there are different categories of add-ons that you should know. They are: Accelerators, Search Providers, Toolbars and Extensions, and InPrivate Filtering. There are actually a couple more. But you need not worry about those at this point because they are a bit more advanced and really not important for what we are discussing here. Let us instead go into the categories mentioned above.

Accelerators are not really anything that speeds up your browsing as you may think by its name. It does make things faster, but in a different sense of the word. Accelerators basically take text that gets highlighted while your are on a web site and by selecting the text you can find maps, define a word, or use a particular accelerator to open another web site or program to handle other functions. So basically an accelerator is something that opens another function depending on what the accelerator you have installed is meant to do, like open a map to an address by simply clicking on the highlighted text on the page.

Search Providers are precisely what you would expect them to be. Everyone is familiar with Google and Bing and some of the others. But by having them installed as an add-on will give you those search providers in a little text bar at the top right side of the Internet Explorer window. Of course different providers have different features and things that people either like or dislike. And by using them as an add-on gives you the option of searching for things on the net directly with your browser instead of having to actually go to the website of that provider, like google.com for example.

ToolBars and Extensions  extra toolbars, animated mouse pointers, stock tickers, and pop-up ad blockers are all things that this add-on does for your browsing. By installing these types of add-ons you can really change the way your Internet Explorer functions. Personally I do not use any of these things because to my they tend to clutter up my experience. But lots of people really like these and enjoy for example a mouse pointer that functions in a way that is well... funky.

InPrivate Filtering is a good one. This basically hides what you are doing when you are on the Internet. Internet Explorer really does a good job of saving information and pages in an effort to make things faster the next time you happen to visit that site. Utilizing its page cache and cookies, Internet Explorer saves tons of information about your browsing experience. However, this can be a bad thing as well. Lets say your searching the Internet for something that you consider private. Well you find what you were looking for, get on a web page or two, read what you wanted to read and then get off the net. You think that your safe right? Not really. A person like me can come along and I can (with a few simple clicks) review everything you just read on the net. So what you were hoping to keep private, I now know about and can spread to all your friends and loved ones! Pretty scary eh? Well there are alot of things like that on a computer that people don't know about but that is a story for another day. InPrivate Filtering is a series of add-ons that you can install that will prevent that from happening. These add-ons can insure that what you do on the net is safe from prying eyes. Because lets face it. Today there are more than one person in almost every household that use a certain computer.

That is it for add-ons. At least for now. I will probably at some point write an article about specific add-ons. Add-ons that are "special" so to speak. But for now I just wanted to point out what add-ons are and what they can do for your browsing experience. Become familiar with them and with managing them. Open the Manage Add-ons windows a couple times and play around with the add-ons already installed on your computer. Once you become familiar with that, you can go to Microsoft's Add-On Central where you can find many, many more add-ons in all different shapes and sizes. Try a few on for size and see how you like or don't like them. You can always remove the ones that don't work for you. Microsoft's Add-On site can be found here.

Trick #2 Taskbar and Jumplists. With the advent of Windows Vista and then Windows 7 Microsoft put an emphasis on the Taskbar. For those who are not aware, the Taskbar is the bar at the very bottom of your screen. In Windows 7 it can be made into a very useful tool. Depending on who the manufacturer of your computer is and where you bought it, your taskbar may have a few different icons on it. My suggestion would be to wipe it clean. To do so right-click on each icon and "unpin" it from the taskbar. Once the Taskbar is empty you can now add only the programs you want to it. And why would you do this? Because the Taskbar is a very useful tool if used properly. It allows you to quickly load any program on your computer without having to search for its shortcut or find it in the Start Menu. And for certain software, having it on the Taskbar provides you with what is called a Jumplist. A Jumplist is a list of documents or such that you have recently loaded into that particular program. For example the Notepad. If you have that pinned to your taskbar and you hover over it with your mouse pointer and then right-click, you will be provided with a list of recently loaded documents. Pretty useful. The Taskbar is useful in a similar way with any program. With any program you have pinned to the Taskbar, hovering over that programs icon with your mouse pointer will provide you with a preview of what that program has loaded or is running currently. For example I have Microsoft Outlook 2010 pinned to my taskbar. When I have Outlook open but minimized it stays on the Taskbar as an icon. Now if I take my mouse pointer and hover over its icon a preview thumbnail will pop up showing me what I am working on. If I have a couple emails open but minimized, the Taskbar will show a preview window for all of the open emails. It is a useful tool especially when you have multiple windows open and your working on all of them.

Anything can be pinned to the Taskbar. And that is what makes it so wonderful. All you have to do is find the program you want on the Taskbar and right-click on it. In the context menu that comes up you will see the option to "Pin This To The Taskbar". So like I said, if you want to utilize it to it fullest potential wipe your Taskbar clean and pin whatever you use the most to it. Once you do you will see how it has helped save you time when all you have to do is load the application from the Taskbar as opposed to finding it in the Start Menu's bloated list.

Thanks for reading. But that is all we have for this installment of Tips and Tricks for Windows 7. There is much more to come as I have a big list of things to write about for this and more come in every day. So if you have a Tip or Trick for Windows 7 that you want to be added shoot me an email. If you send me one that I don't already know about or already have on my Master List you can win a free Blackberry app! That's right, our first Aggregate Universe dedicated contest! Send me a Windows 7 Trick that is not on my master list of tricks and you can win a Blackberry app from Crackberry's Appstore! I will name the app later as this idea just came to me as I was concluding this article.. way to be organized Tony! Look for the article detailing the contest to be posted soon. That's it for now.

Windows 7 Tips, Tricks (and the occasional Hack).

Continuing in our ongoing series of Windows 7 tricks, we bring you another installment of Windows 7 wonderfulness. I must say, that the more and more I play with this operating system, I find that it is very forgiving as well. With the past incantations of Windows OS's, changes you would make would eventually have dire consequences. With today's Windows 7, you can play around without too much worry about "breaking" anything. So with that said, the tips I have picked to post today are along the lines of giving the user some options and tools. And without making you wait any longer.. here we are.

Something to keep in mind too as far as the numbering conventions are. I have chose to number these as either a Tip and Trick or a Hack. And as such, those numbers will continue in sequence based on what they are being considered. Or based on what category they fall into. So you may have Tip number 1 this week and Tip number 2 next week. But on the list in the post you will see Tip 1 and right after Trick 1. As I said, the numbers are based on what category is listed and continuing from there.

Hack #1: The God Mode Folder. This one is fun. I really like this one. Basically what you get with this folder you make is a folder that once you open it you are given the option to run ANY program or tool that you have in the control panel. So any tool found in the control panel or in the control panel sub folder structure or any other tool found in the accessories of any Windows tool can be found within this folder. You can do ANYTHING with this folder. And here is how to make one. Make a new folder just like any other by right-clicking and choosing new, and folder. When you name the folder, here is where the trick is. Copy and paste the following: God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. You can put the folder anywhere you want, you just have to make sure you have the text just as it is above which is why it is easier to just copy and paste what I have there. And there you have it. Give it a shot, you will love it.

Tip #2: Windows 7 can now run a virtual drive, just like a much used program such as Daemon Tools. Before, if you would want to run a virtual drive to mount an ISO you would need to download and install a program such as Daemon Tools in order to make this happen. However, now with Windows 7 you can do this using nothing more than your Windows Operating System. All you need to do is open your command box in your start menu and type the following syntax: "diskmgmt.msc". And there you have it. Pretty simple and easy.

Tip #3: The Resource Monitor is a tool that has been included with previous versions of Windows for a long time. Usually however people would only load this up as a mistake when they were trying to reboot using the tried and true method of "control-alt-delete". Then the resource monitor would pop up and people would look at it and say, "Wow. Cool." And that would be it. Windows 7 give us so many more options with many things and the Resource Monitor is no exception. The new and improved Resource Monitor will give you performance information on nearly everything on your computer. And within every tab (CPU/NETWORK/DISK/MEMORY) you have the option of checking performance and resource use for every program or feature running on your system. In addition, should your system lock up, and this is by far the best improvement, you can go to the CPU tab, locate the program giving you the trouble click it and hit "Analyze". Windows will then try and find out why the program locked up. Allowing you to fix the problem or make sure it does not happen in the future. This will save many an IT pro or Novice user alike plenty of time in the troubleshooting department! Good Job Microsoft! And I hardly ever say that!!

And that wraps up our second installment of the Tips and Tricks. Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Check back in a few days for more. We will be bringing this to you at least once or twice a week. See you soon!

Windows 7 Tips and Tricks (with the occasional Hack)

Well, well, well... I think there are a couple people out there that know me that were wondering when I was going to start sprinkling in a couple things like this here and there. Some of you (and you know who you are) who go back to the good old Commodore 64 days with me have even emailed and contributed a couple of these so-called "Tips and Tricks" of their own. So I thought it only fair to start an on-going series of posts highlighting some of the more useful ones. So there you have it, going forward we will call it, Windows Tips, Tricks (with the occasional Hack). Keep in mind however, that we will be focusing on the Windows 7 variety, at least at first. Windows 7 is probably one of the more user capable  versions of Windows that Microsoft has developed in many years, maybe in forever. I say use capable because there are a ton of "power user" functions built in to simple commands and mouse clicks. Making even the novice very capable if given the right information. O0000hh.. scary. And off we go.

Trick #1: Windows 7 now makes having your computer geek buddy or family member helping you with a problem your having much easier on the geek. In the past, you would have to sit on the phone and try to explain how something with your computer is just not working right, or why something your doing is not producing the desired effect or results. Now with Windows 7 there is help! All you have to do is go into the command box (its the little text entry box located at the very bottom of your start menu that pops up when you click on the Windows Orb at the bottom left corner of your screen) and type in PSR. A box will pop up and when it does click "Record". Windows will the record every keystroke and action you perform. It will even take screen shots along the way. This will create a complete record of everything you do on your computer as you attempt to recreate the error you are having. It will save the information in a file that whoever is helping you fix your computer can run. When they do, it will show them every single little thing that you did to cause the problem your experiencing on your system. Then they will know exactly what they need to do to either fix it or tell you how NOT to break stuff anymore!

TIP #1: The Windows 7 calculator. Sure. You are probably thinking, "the calculator? WTH do you call that a tip for!?!?" Well my friend, when was the last time you checked what the calculator in Windows 7 can actually do? Sure, I don't blame you for not thinking it can do much. Especially after getting used to the previous Windows versions offering. But you really should click "View" in the calculator menu bar and check out the various different modes that are offered in the Windows 7 version. In addition to having the ability to turn it into a robust scientific calculator, you also have the ability to turn it into a statistical monster. You can make it give you a whole bunch of unit conversions as well. When was the last time you needed to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit? Or liters into gallons. That and much more is available. You can try out date calculations to see how many days are between a couple dates as well as a whole slew of data calculations that are used in various spreadsheets. Check out all the various modes, I'm sure you will be surprised.

That's it for now. But check back often. I have a bunch of these at the moment, and more are coming in all the time. I will be numbering them as either a Tip, Trick or a Hack starting from 1 and going forward. I will try to include one of each category (at least) for each post. But of course this all depends on available time and other factors. So check back occasionally for this and other posts. Enjoy!